The Sea Inside

On the surface, Alejandro Amenabar's The Sea Inside is an emotionally overwrought, somewhat treacley, "disease of the week" tearjerker. Underneath the melodramatic veneer, well, it's still an emotionally overwrought, "disease of the week" tearjerker. Sadly, this is the film's inherent flaw; that it smacks of saccharine Lifetime For Men-styled emotive exploitation and unabashed heartstring pulling. What will no doubt be perceived as crash, emotionally detached criticism on my part will most likely cause some to paint me as a heartless shell of a man, but that won't change the fact that Amenabar's film is a beautifully frustrating exercise in dramatic manipulation.

The story which unfolds is a rather simple one, focusing on the true story of Ramon Sampedro, the first man to attempt to legalize euthanasia in Spain. Sampedro (portrayed by Javier Bardem) was paralyzed from the neck down in his early twenties and as the film opens he has spent the better part of the past 30 years bed ridden and dependent on his family to bathe, clothe, and feed him. At the core of his will to live is his will to die, specifically the right to a legalized assisted death and to this end he has waged an ongoing battle with the government to earn the right to kill himself.

While Sampedro begs to die with dignity, one can't help but wonder why he stayed alive for more than 30 years, burdening his family, and constantly complaining that the government wouldn't let him die in peace. Interestingly enough, there doesn't appear to have been any religious stigma attached to his willingness to die. In fact, there's a pivotal scene in which a high profile quadriplegic Catholic priest visits Sampedro and implores him to recapture his zest for life. For all intents and purposes Sampedro tells him to piss off. Which brings us to perhaps my most crass observation about the story told in the film. For 30 years Sampedro butted heads with the Spanish government trying to get them to legalize euthanasia. Yet if he was so willing to die, so fed up with living without dignity, all he had to do was roll over and smother himself. He would have effectively died in his sleep, which would have been just as dignified as being administered poison, don't you think? Of course if Sampedro had taken his life early on, then we wouldn't have been exposed to his bristling poetry or the emotionally charged story from which this film arises.

That said, there is a glaring contrast, an almost downright hypocritical nature to Sampedro's character, so much so that it prevents him from being a truly sympathetic character. It also sets up the most interesting conflict within the film. We never really get to know what Sampredro's motives are. He says he wishes to die with dignity, but this includes enlisting others to do his dirty work. Similarly he claims that his life is devoid of dignity, yet he stayed alive in a state of "indignity" for more than 30 years before he finally took his own life. In short, the man's definition of what it means to die with dignity is murky at best.

While his plight is surely heartbreaking, at the center of it all is what essentially amounts to an arrogant, stereotypical Latin male figure who prizes pride above all else. Beyond that, however, regardless of being based on a true story, it's a tale we've seen countless times before, both on the silver and small screens (Whose Life Is It Anyway? from 1981, being one of the most high profile examples).

Belen Rueda in The Sea Inside

Despite the heavy handed nature of the story, the acting is top notch and almost saves the film from languishing in the deepest depth of maudlin reproach. Bardem never disappoints, bringing a certain amount of intensity to the role of Sampedro. In fact it's one of the most emotionally incendiary performances of the year, has already garnered a Golden Globe nomination, and will no doubt earn him an Oscar nod. These accolades are well deserved, without a question, as Bardem's portrayal of a proud and at times arrogant man from a culture that has long prided itself on its masculinity is mesmerizing. Likewise the performances from the supporting cast are equally moving, from Belen Rueda as the Julia, the lawyer helping Sampedro battle the courts to Lola Duenas as the local woman Rosa who falls in love with Sampedro down to the family members Manuela, Jose, Joaquin, and Javi, as portrayed by Mabel Rivera, Celso Bugallo, Joan Dalmau, and Tamar Novas, respectively.

Additionally, from a technical standpoint The Sea Inside is an incredibly beautiful film, imbued with richly muted tones of green and blue, lending the entire picture with a crisp, ocean-swept ambiance. Director of Photography Javier Aguirresarobe previously worked with Amenabar on The Others, and his sharp attention to color schemes and alternating sense of crisp and warm atmospheres is a feast for the eyes.

The excellent acting and incredible look and feel of the film isn't the problem, however. Instead it's the absence of a concrete story, at least one possessing a central character with a clear motive, and above that, the overwhelming feeling of overt emotional manipulation on the part of director/co-writer Amenabar. As revealed to us here, Sampedro's character doesn't really have a motive for his 30-year battle against the government of Spain. His character is never shown to care about aiding other quadriplegics in their quest for dignified death. Nor is he ultimately a sympathetic individual, instead coming off as a very self-motivated and self-centered person. Thus, in the end, The Sea Inside is a beautiful, rippling mirage wrapped around an empty husk of misplaced emotions.